


Rinse and Repeat

by stillmadaboutpetra



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst and Feels, Anxiety, Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hair Washing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Simon Snow, Sad Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Self-Harm, Trauma, Watford Eighth Year, post numpties, pre-truce, tiny bit of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29559282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: I have a million lectures on why towel drying your hair is bad for the follicles and even the worrisome thread of premature balding despite my father’s insistence that the hairline I inherited won’t betray me, but I’m so tired and any truce in the constant war of my life is too good a gift to look at twice.Simon Snow is toweling me off like a kitten he found in the gutter, and I’m too far gone not to be fine with it.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 80
Kudos: 179





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> just a quick two-shot because I have too many thoughts in my head and need to get at least one out of the way. this is far less macabre than i've been going of late - maybe I can write some vague fluff? admist? pain?

**Simon**

Baz isn’t okay.

Like, relative to normal ideas of Okay.

“He seem off?”

Penny deems my question worthy enough to look at Baz across the class. He’s drooping over his book, holding his head up with his hand. Really holding it up; he’s out of focus. He’s more blur than boy.

Penny doesn’t like to indulge or reward my behavior, says she won’t enable me but maybe just this once because she pokes up the bridge of her glasses and narrows her eyes in a _okay that’s weird_ assessment.

“Baz is weird.”

“Yeah, but.” We look at him together. Normally he senses me when I’m staring. He’s not sensing a whole lot. He didn’t raise his hand all morning and now we’re past lunch (which he skipped even though he looks like a couple of twigs held together by a necktie.) He still hasn’t raised his hand. He’s slouching. Baz doesn’t slouch.

“Fine. He’s off.”

“I think he’s sick.”

Penny flips her Greek page noisily. “He’s allowed to be sick.”

“He’s a vampire, he can’t get sick.”

“Allegedly. And we don’t know that. Maybe it’s,” she pauses for dramatic effect, “a blood-born pathogen.” Then she laughs at her own joke. I swear she’s about to high five herself. I look over at him again; normally if Penny and I get the giggles in class, he shoots us a glare. But nope, notta, nothing. He’s just _there_.

Not really. He’s not even _there_. He’s somewhere else, far far away from me. I thought I got him back.

He came back to school, showy as fuck, dramatic as hell, and now I’m not sure if it’s even him. Like maybe they were working on a Baz Clone and the real Baz is off doing nefarious missions for his spooky dad and this knock-off Baz Clone is just a decoy. A red herring.

This Baz Clone sucks. They got it all wrong.

He’s both more and less annoying than before. He doesn’t fight me about keeping the window open. He’s slow getting up. He has a limp. Everytime he moves, he clenches his teeth; he drags himself. It’s not a clone. It’s a corpse. A zombie. Maybe he is sick, real vampire sick. He looks shitty.

Penny tries to tug me out of class. I shake my head. She makes a vaguely threatening gesture that means she loves me before she goes to her next class because she also likes her semi-decent attendance record. (I mean, she’s aces this year so far. Haven’t dragged her off once.) (She can cry all she wants about being lulled but she’s foaming at the mouth to be beat Baz for valedictorian and I’m pretty sure that one’s in the bag considering Baz is fucking off.)

“What’s wrong with you?”

Baz actually startles. Well. Not full on bambi-in-the-thicket startles but he blinks heavily and his eyes sort of...slide back into focus. I don’t think eyes can do that but he’s a little more here all of a sudden. Sharper. He straightens and it’s a relief to watch him grow tall again, even if it means he’s putting his weight fully on both legs and - nope, he cocks his hip and shifts sideways.

“I’m not interested in confessing imaginary sins right now, Snow.” He lifts up a bony hand and makes a shooing gesture like I’m an alley cat or probably less than that, a gaggle of cooing pigeons. Tube pigeons. The ones that are cockeyed.

“Where were you?”

He sighs heavily and goes to shoulder past me. I stand my ground and he caves in around me, tilting sideways. I watch his face widen with surprise, eyes scrunch up. He draws into himself, takes two quick steps away from me, around me.

“Brute.”

“Baz. Are you sick?”

He laughs as he walks away, the stride of his legs not nearly so long and proud as it once was. “Only in the head.”

What the fuck does that mean?

**Baz**

Snow only threw a fit the first week I started my new routine: showering in the morning and the night. He misses the midday showers. I never thought to investigate the plumbing in Mummer’s House but I imagine my constant hot water use is putting a real drain on the tank. Well, I suppose I’m paying for it in the long run with taxes now, so it’s fine and fair that I get to use all the water I’d like.

The showers do nothing for the pervasive cold I can’t shake, the phantom sensation of filth on me. My skin’s too tight over my bones; I’m crawling with a festering ghost. Something hurts in me but the pain slinks around my body; I’m itching from the inside out. I can’t sit still but I haven’t the energy to move; I can’t sleep but I’m exhausted. I can’t focus. I should have caught up with the classwork I’d missed but I keep skipping lines; I’m turning pages without seeing the words. I read three chapters last night and couldn’t recall what the topic was.

What’s wrong with me? I wish I knew.

Food still turns my stomach even as I hunger. And the dark -- **star light, star brigh** t works just as well making a nightlight for Mordelia as it does for me. Snow hasn’t seen it yet, hidden under the covers with me. The covers are almost too much, too much on my body, near my mouth, but I can stand a little suffocation to lessen my overall mortification.

What’s wrong with me? Nothing. I’m fine.

In fact I’m so fine that I’m arguing with myself in the mirror. Not out loud but nearly. No, I’m defeating myself, hung over the sink, fighting a wave of nausea and skittering away from my own reflection. I don’t like it. I don’t like what’s looking back at me.

I’m dripping into the drain. I need to dry my hair. I need to put on clothes. I need to get off the floor. I don’t remember getting on the floor but I’m down here with the toilet bowl. Best just to crawl back into the tub then. Have a proper lie down.

Sitting in the shower is a bit like taking a bath, so I suppose now I’ve graduated to taking baths in the middle of the day. I’m trending downward and can’t stop it. Marvelous.

I feel less clean by the end. Just wet. Soggy. Feel like bread in the pond water, ruining a duck’s digestive system.

I laugh to myself and the noise bangs around the ceramic of the tub and then I’m in the coffin again crying for help and I’m out of the bathroom so fast I don’t bother with anything, not a towel, not the streak of water, not the running tap.

That’s how Simon finds me. In a wet bed, the water running cold in the bath, a trail of misery behind me.

He looks at the unmopped mess of me in my sheets, chattering cold, a tuck of limbs, the water rushing in the en suite.

“What’s wrong with you.” He demands it, all blunt punctuation, full stop. Stomps into the bathroom and snaps the faucet off, pausing to look at the water that’s bloody everywhere. My school clothes abandoned, the vanity a scattered series of knocked over products I haven’t the energy to use.

“Go away, Snow.”

He sits down on the floor by my bed, staring like a particularly slow child or like one of those damaged dogs that can’t figure out how glass doors work.

“What happened to you?”

“Take a guess.”

Really, I want to know his theories. Maybe he’ll say something better than being kidnapped by numpties and kept in a coffin. _My_ coffin. I was on death’s door. I had a foot over the threshold. I think I left a bit of me behind in that dark place. I left broken fingernails and blood and scratches. Tears and piss and shit. I left crushed and licked clean styrofoam cups and chewed up plastic straws.

He frowns, mouth opening as he sighs and then it just hangs open as he breathes and I’m staring down into his blunt crooked bottom teeth. The incisors cross over, one pushed behind the other. It’s not that noticeable straight on, but now I can see the missmash of it. It’s strangely soothing to gaze at, altogether meaningless; I love his smile, but look, it’s a bit fucked up, isn’t it?

“I don’t know,” he says at length, levering off the floor and going back into the bathroom. I no sooner think ‘come back’ than he does, this time with a towel. My towel. He sits on my bed.

“You can’t sit on my bed,” I sneer, and then I sputter as he dumps the towel over my wet head.

“You look right pathetic, Baz.” And then he starts to rub my hair dry.

I have a million lectures on why towel drying your hair is bad for the follicles and even the worrisome thread of premature balding despite my father’s insistence that the hairline I inherited won’t betray me, but I’m so tired and any truce in the constant war of my life is too good a gift to look at twice. Simon Snow is toweling me off like a kitten he found in the gutter and I’m too far gone not to be fine with it.

**Simon**

There’s loads of sheets and blankets in the way, but I’m fairly sure Baz is naked in bed. The bed that I’m on. The bed that I’m on while I dry his hair with his towel because he looks like a drowned rat and normally he eats rats and this Clone Baz is letting me do all this, so something is seriously truly fucked. This is a shit clone. Someone should have consulted me.

I didn’t plan to do all this. All I wanted to do was pop in and grab a book I forgot but then Baz was here and well, how he is, looking like he lost a fight against a garden hose. The bathroom’s a mess; it looks worse than it does after I shower and forget to bring the towel off the hook to the sink so I can get it and then slop water everywhere and don’t spell it dry and then Baz steps in it in his socks and berates me - I guess I’m a bit shit for a roommate. Wet socks are the worst especially in the winter but -

Baz tips his head forward, eyes shut, and I push the towel around the shape of his skull, awkwardly patting him dry. I didn’t plan to start towel-drying him, honestly, but I started and he didn’t stop me and I like to finish what I start. He’s got a lot of hair. The towel’s super thick and plush as anything; I don’t think it’s magick, just rich people towels. Special rich fibers. I don’t know anything about towels or fibers. People talk about Egyptian cotton a lot but that’s probably not this. Terrycloth? Flax linen? I’m pretty much trying to think of things a towel could be made out of to distract myself from what I’m doing. But seriously, it’s so absorbent. I wonder if I can nick one at the end of term.

They’re monogrammed…Bloody Toff Prat.

I sop up the worst of the water so it stops dripping everywhere and then shift closer to scrunch his hair in sections. Penny does this and she’s got loads more hair than Baz. I’ve always wanted to touch his hair, so I do, even if it’s wet and kind of knotty. It always looks like silk, like your fingers would go through it perfectly, so soft you’d go back for more, chasing the whisper of it. It’s not like that now. It tangles my fingers up like a trap, strands of black ink an angry scrawl on my skin.

“Ow.” He pinches an eye open.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “You’ve got knots.”

He sighs and reaches up for my hand. I jerk away, out of his hair, yanking at his knots again.

He snarls, pressing a hand to the side of his head.

“Cry baby,” I mutter on instinct, pushing him a little to mop the water off his shoulders as my way of saying sorry. He doesn’t stop me doing this either. I run the towel down his back where he’s sat up, stopping when his spine dips in, where the blanket circles around his definitely naked waist. “What happened to your thousand and one hair lotions?”

“Conditioner?”

“You’re a condition.”

He shakes his head and rolls his eyes in one coordinated motion. It makes me feel better, to see a little of his snottiness back. Less Clone, more Baz. I swipe up a rivulet of water chasing down his neck. He watches me from under his brows as I dab behind his ears.

“What the hell are you doing, Simon?”

I shake my head at him. “Cor blimey, not a clue.”

He laughs, a big wet honk of sound. “You’re fucking with me.” He looks a little wild-eyed overtop his triangle smile. It’s kind of cute in a freaky way.

“M’not. You’re freaking me out.”

He nods sagely. I pull the towel back and stare at him. He gets on me about the staring usually, says I look like a kid in a case study. He’s a twat. Doesn’t say anything now. His hair’s still wet. Damp, rather, but it’s gonna need more than a towel. He doesn’t magick his hair; he uses a dryer, the ponce. Says something about getting it to lay correctly. I tried to use his dryer once and my hair looked like I took up with a glam band.

He still doesn’t look right. He doesn’t stop me from pushing the hair off his face. He’s got some stuck in his mouth, a squiggle of it, and I pluck it away from his lips. They fall apart. His teeth are a little crooked. I want to smooth him out.

I wonder if fangs can be crooked.

“Do you put it in after?”

“W-what?” He croaks, closing his mouth with a click, looking away, looking back, glaring at me.

“The conditioner. Is it leave-in?” Penny has stuff she leaves in. “I can - well it can go in now, yeah? Cuz your hair’s still wet.” What am I even talking about. “And then it won’t be knotty.”

He nods very slowly.

**Baz**

I must have hit my head on the toilet or drowned in the tub because Simon Snow is rubbing a gargantuan blob of leave-in conditioner between his hands like he’s lubing up to inseminate a cow. (My father’s an agriculturist, I know these sort of horrid things.)

I want to chastise him for using so much, it’s going to leave me absolutely greasy, but I’ve been putting my hair through the ringer the last few weeks and it needs all the argan oil it can get. I’ve been karmically validated after he has to peel off his wet socks after splashing across the bathroom floor and cursing me - serves him right. But now he’s in bed with me, where I’m still decidedly naked, and he’s in his bare feet, and I can’t turn my back to him; I refuse; I can’t do anything, so he’s reaching around me to rub conditioner all over my head, so close I could kiss him.

“You don’t put it on the roots,” I tell him, feeling out of my own body, a third party observer to the impossible bizarrity of the situation.

“You do now,” he huffs. He’s trying to be gentle, I think, working the conditioners from root to tip. There’s so much, the oiliness immediately seeps through and onto my shoulders and I hate that sensation. I grope for the towel and pull it up my naked chest to fit beneath my hair.

I’m so naked and it’s - not important. I’m naked and we’re not acknowledging it. Seven years of meticulous privacy, down the drain. Simon’s in bed with me while I’m naked and he doesn’t care because he’s not in love with me, and I can’t be arsed to react because I left too much of myself behind in a coffin.

Maybe I’m dead. Alright then. I accept it. I was planning to die soon anyway, clock was ticking, graduation rolling around, the War of Wars and all that Final Battle fanfare - just skipped ahead a bit. I always was an advanced student.

Simon’s massaging my scalp now, mouth-breathing on me. It’s lovely. It really is. Blue eyes. Bronze curls. Freckles. His indomitable strength. His arms around me. Everything I ever dreamed of, now conveniently dropped in my lap on my bed. Crowley, I’m living a charmed life.

I feel safe for the first time since I saw the light again, and I don’t know how to make the feeling stay because this will end soon. There’s only so much pity in his heart. There’s only so much hair care to perform. His good samaritan moment will run its course and I’ll be back in the shower tonight, washing it all away.

His blunt nails scrape up the back of my head gently and I sigh, rocking forward, exposing myself more. Just snap my neck now please. Behead me. Let me die like this. Cradle my skull after. Keep me around like Percy. You can make it into a candlestick holder if it tickles your fancy.

“Baz?”

“Hmm?”

He runs the fingers of both hands through the length of my hair, feeling for knots slowly, carefully. He doesn’t want to hurt me again. There’s a thought.

“It’s all conditioned.”

“That it is,” I murmur, giving up, giving in.

I hear rather than see him lick and chew his lip. He repeats the action, playing with my hair, scrunching it gently behind my ears, his thumbs rubbing my temples. I go doll-soft, held up by him. I watch his naked toes curl into my bedsheets.

“Baz?”

“Hmm?”

He removes his touch from me, shifting around on the bed. We’re still facing each other so I watch him stare at his oily hands contemplatively before lifting them up and rubbing them through his own hair. I snort. He makes a face.

“Well I’m not gonna waste it.”

“I know how you feel about leftovers.”

He makes another face, a reluctant smile that conjures dimples, a squash of his nose because he wants to be offended but knows I’m right.

His curls now thoroughly weighted down by hair product that probably has each follicle gasping in shock at such love and affection (he really needs product,) Simon wipes his hands off on the towel that’s left a giant wet patch around the giant wet patch of me.

“What next?”

I manage a weary eyebrow up one half of my face. “Excuse me?”

He gestures hugely, almost slapping me in the face in the process. I smack his hand away out of reflex and absurdly he grins, like a bit of roughhousing makes the sun shine.

“Your hair. What next? You spend ages on it everyday. You’ve gotta have like, a twelve step routine.”

It’s seven steps, thank you very much. Seven steps I haven’t done once in the last two weeks. It’s just so much work, and for what? No one’s really noticed. No one’s noticed that I’m slipping.

No one but him.

Stalker.

“It’s fine Snow-”

“What? C’mon, I just got started.”

He reaches out and pushes his fingers into my hair, like he’s allowed to do that. His palm cups the side of my skull. “I’ll braid it. I can do braids. Pigtails. You’re fit enough to pull them off.”

He looks desperate. He looks, and I’m hesitant to even think it, but he looks worried. Not suspicious, not huffy or demented. Concerned.

I’ve thrown his already rubble and smoke life further out of order. What have we not always been to each other but reliable. We have our roles and scripts, our two-step dance, the entrance and exit planned. I’ve cocked it all up with my little meltdown. And him? He can’t even figure out how to improvise to keep the show going.

“You really are the worst Chosen One ever chosen,” I say wondrously, shaking my head. Simon Snow, sees his enemy weakened and wants to braid his bloody hair. I’m not even surprised.

He retreats his touch. His smile falls off his face.

“We’re missing class,” he says, twisting on my bed but still not getting off, not fully. His bare feet come down to the ground and I hear the faint little crinkle of a crisp crumb crush under his heel. He glares sideways at me. “Are you coming?”

I am not missing class. “Wouldn’t dream of missing Rhetoric.”

He nods firmly, like this is a done deal. “Alright. C’mon.”

“I’m completely starkers. Snow. You need to leave.”

He’d been handling it so gracefully; Magic, I’d been handling it gracefully. I’m too far in the grave to be wowed by my own nudity at the moment, and he’s too noble to be bothered by it or something. Until now; his cheeks light up like someone’s slapped him silly and he shoots off the bed with a fire under his arse.

“Right, yeah, course, yeah, you, uhm, I’ll leave you to it then, yean - I’ll-” He flops over to his desk and grabs three books for classes he’s already finished for the day, forgetting the Rhetoric one entirely. “Just - come, yeah? No funny business.”

He looks not at me but at the en suit, frazzled nerves falling away. “Come to class, Baz.”

“I’ll be right behind you, Snow.”

“Like it more when I can see you but-” he shakes his head and _what the bloody hell does that mean_ but then he’s clobbering his way out our bedroom door. If my hair wasn’t soaked through with conditioner in a way I’d never do it, I’d have thought the last fifteen minutes entirely invented, conjured up from the sad recesses of my pathetic mind. But no, I suppose there are still surprises in the world of mages, and Simon Snow continues to be at the crux of them.

**Simon**

He comes to class. He looks a little better. His hair’s so shiny. I did that. Good. Put him back in order. It’s just better this way. Better to have Baz being Baz where I can see him than have him gone from me.

Merlin, I wish he’d tell me what happened to him. Something happened to him. Something bad. That much is obvious. I wish he’d tell me. Then I could - I could know. I could fix it, maybe. Can I? Why would I? But it’s wrong. Nothing’s supposed to touch Baz except me. It’s him and me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ch2 a bit angstier. upfront warning that simon finds baz questionably drowning in the bathtub. (not on purpose but baz does not explain.) (roo, if ur reading this, it's only a little bit of blood and a little bit of bruises.) Thank you for reading. Trauma is messy.

* * *

**Simon**

The shower running in the dead of night isn't what wakes me. I was already (still?) awake when Baz came shuffling in from hunting. He's less subtle about it this year. Skulks out to the Wavering Woods every other night and slinks back in, dragging his feet into the bathroom. Nothing else in the world is happening except Baz and the lingering mystery of him, where he'd been, what happened. It's all I can think about.

Him. His mum’s ghost. Nicodemus. Murder. Baz. Baz and my hands in his hair and his shut eyes with the ghosts of purple bruises beneath them.

He's casting children's spells on himself. Nightlights and lullabies. He thinks I don't hear. That's not it; I hear. I just don't believe what I'm hearing.

Would missing his mum’s visit push him over the edge? I didn't think there _was_ an edge with Baz but there is and I'm watching him teeter on it. One strong gust of wind and there he goes. Yeah. Looks like a stiff wind would knock him over. It's not right. It's not right at all. He's supposed to be beautiful and ruthless and made of shark's teeth. He looks like the leftovers of someone else’s feeding frenzy.

He's in the shower again. Again. Still. Always. He comes back and I fall asleep to the sound of running water, but I wake up and it's still running and it's still dark and the bed next to me is empty.

I sit up and I don't need to spell on the lights. The bathroom light’s wobbling around from under the crack of the door. It's wobbling because the floor’s wet. The floor’s flooded.

My feet splash down into it. It's cold. It's freezing. The windows open and it's cold out and the waters fucking cold, shocking me awake, knocking my nerves full of fear. Feels like falling through ice. Going under.

Water's running out of the en suite. The bed next to me is empty.

Door’s locked.

I pound on it. Pound it in with my fist. “Baz. Open up. Baz, you lunatic. It's - you nut, Baz! **Open**.”

Water sloshes in little waves as the door swings wide. Baz is sprawled in the bath, fully dressed, water pouring from the tap. His eyes are closed. His cheeks slumped to his shoulder, all of him slouched so low the water's past his lips, licking at his nostrils.

I'm on my knees beside the bath in a second, bang-slam right there, hauling him up by his sopping heavy blazer. He coughs awake, eyes groggily opening - thank fuck.

“You mad fucking rabbit,” I curse him, shaking him. He's gray, he's blue, he's one big bruise of cold skin and chattering bones. “You - you're insane.”

He chatters my name, _Snow_ strung out across twenty teeth-clack syllables. His lips bulge with too many teeth, all clumsy death in his mouth. I can't even feel victorious looking at his bloody fangs because he's too busy drowning himself.

“You're ruining this for me,” I grumble, dragging his dead weight up, trying to get his legs under him. He clings to me, some sense of self-preservation kicking in; “can you stand - no - sod it.”

I'm already wet and the situation's already absolute shit. I pick him up, grunting, wrestling up his long legs. It's like picking up cooked spaghetti. He's completely useless the whole time, nothing but a heavy popsicle. It's a circus act getting us out of the en suite, feels like a scene out of Titanic. Those poor idiots on that boat. This is absolutely bollocks and I'm in a bedroom. Would be at least ten times worse if it was a downing ship.

I drop Baz onto his bed and slap on the lights and turn back to look at him. Adrenaline's chugging through me; the rooms screaming even though no one's saying a word. I watch as he sags sideways into his pillow, completely unresponsive.

“Baz.”

I scramble on top of him, rolling him over into his back and shaking him. “Look at me you arse.”

There's blood on the pillow. Oh, Merlin, Merlin’s hairy nipples, did he fall in the bath? Was that what happened? I can't see the blood on his head, all lost in his dark wet hair, but he's bleeding somewhere cause his pillow’s gone garrish and red as he puddles out.

“Baz. Wake up.”

I roll his face between my hands and press my fingers along the side of his skull, feeling my way to a sticky patch. It's not bad. It doesn't feel jagged like he's split bone.

Where's my wand? My wand's shit.

 **“Get well soon.”** But my lips are quivering and all I do is steam and smoke. Fine. Head wounds bleed. It's not big. I'll patch it the old fashion way but first -

“Baz. Wake up.” I cup his freezing cheeks and shake him a little more. His eyes flutter open but they close again. He's freezing. “You - you're so _difficult_.” He makes my life hell.

Why did I let him out of my sight? I should have been following him. I should have been watching him closer. He's not fine and he won't tell me what's wrong and it's not like that's who we are but - but we could be. We could be.

“What's wrong with you,” I ask even though I know he won't answer. Can't. Won't. All the same. I sit him up like a rag doll and start stripping him of his wet clothes. My cross falls out of my pajama shirt and swings dangerously near his face. I yank it off and chuck it to splash on the floor before going back to his shirt, fingers trembling on his buttons. His sleeves catch on his hands that are clenched into fists; he's got something in his hand.

He struggles a little, coming to. “What-”

“Help me,” I demand. He's useless. I always thought he'd be handy in a pinch; this is what I mean by booksmarts aren't useful. Rubbish. I'll keep my street smarts; here's my evidence Penny.

He tips forehead until his head drops to my shoulder. Blood smears on my cheek. All he does is shudder and gasp, no help at all, and then, with a wrenching sound like metal against metal, a bloody car crash of vocals, he starts to cry.

Fuck me, I'm well shocked. I don't even know what the sound is at first but it's a great cracking sob in my ear, a full-bodied heave of pain. It sounds beaten out of him, rib-snapping in its might. I've never heard a bloke have a go like this. He sucks in a breath with a slice and sobs again, wrapping his arms around me, mouth open and already drooling as he goes into it full tilt like a little kid, gasping and crying like he can't keep air either way.

“Okay, okay, you're okay mate, fuck, Baz, fucking hell, you're alright now, yeah, right here nice and safe l - I'm right here.” What do you even say in this situation? I give up on trying to get him out of his clothes and just hold him, hands steaming over his frigid body, rubbing up and down the knobbed curve of his spine, fingers slatting over his ribs like a bloody marimba. When the hell did he get so skinny? He feels like I do after care. “I'm right here. You're here.”

He just carries on sobbing, rolling his forehead into my shoulder, shaking. I think about being scared about all those teeth right at my neck but I'm not.

The only thing I'm scared of is whatever did this to Baz Pitch.

What could do this to _Baz?_

(Did the Humdrum get him?)

He gulps in a sticky breath, panting and working himself to hyperventilate. “Si-”

“Alright now-”

_“Simon-”_

“Right here. Got you. Got you, Baz.”

He stiffens for one stolen silent second before he whines and shoves his face into my neck, huffing frantically, shivering.

“Crowley, Baz, let's get you out of these sodding clothes.”

He leans away from me reluctantly, face downcast. I have to unbutton his cuffs and work them over his hands.

He unclenches them, fingers unfolding stiffly.

“Is that a rat?”

I look at the black thing in his hand.

It dangles out from his palm. He turns his hand over and drops a hunk of hair onto his sheets.

Ripped out his own bloody hair. Ripped himself bloody. We stare at it. It's obscene. Like a nudey mag or a gun.

I unbutton the other cuff and peel off his shirt and blazer, almost choke him with the tie I forget about it.

“You're telling me,” I tell him. He just blinks and rubs his hand over the bedsheets, wiping off hair. I get down on the floor into the water and undo his slacks, work them down his hips and legs, trying to remember his busted leg. I'm not smooth getting off his stupid oxfords. Shoes. Shoes in the bath. He's lost it. Gone around the bend fully. Battier than Dracula. This is it, lads, pad the cells. We've got a live one. I'm afraid to laugh in case I sick up on his feet. Think he'd be right pissed about that. Maybe it'd get a proper reaction out of him.

I strip him down to his skivvies and just stare at him before lifting him up and dumping him into my bed where it's dry. No point thinking about what's happening, dwelling doesn't get you anywhere. Penny can say what she wants about being lulled - I'm the opposite. Whatever lulled is, I'm the other direction. I'm leagues away from bloody fucking lulled.

The tap’s still going. The floors shit. At least it hasn't reached the room door yet. I stomp off to take care of the bathtub. Baz’s rich people towel is sucked into the bottom, stopping the drain. (I can't decide if that's proof of its high quality fibers or not.) He's got soaps and whatnot everywhere. His posh face washes. His froofroo little headband thing. I think he was gonna take a bath and then what - got in a fight with his hair? Fell? Decided it wasn't worth it? It's a mystery painted in chaos and one I'm not gonna solve staring at.

Baz is in my bed, a lump under the blankets. That's my chaos. That's all I can deal with right now. Not the mystery but the fact. I sit down next to him and press a dry washrag to the sticky wound. It's hardly bleeding anymore. His hair’s caught it all.

He flinches.

“F-freezing.”

“I believe it.”

I make him hold the rag to his head and slosh across the room to close the window and then I crawl in beside him, squirming out of my wet clothes and leaving them as a sploggy heap on the floor.

He's so damn easy to loop my arms around.

“C-can’t y-you spe-ell me wah-arm?” He gnashes his teeth and groans, shrinking down, looking pissier by the second. I should have gotten him a candy bar or a cup of water but I'm in bed now so he's gotta tough it out.

“Since when do you want me to use magic on you?” I push the hair off his forehead and use the heel of my palm to cuff the tear tracks on his puffy face.

His face cracks around a shitty little smile, squinting from where he's smooshed into my pillow. There he is. That's Baz. “T-true.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought you prick.” I rub my hands vigorously over his back and arms, squeezing him. “We're doing it the old fashioned way.”

He shakes hard and I think he'd insult me more but he gives up, eyes closing and body twitching closer to me. He's all leg. He's not tall laying down with me.

“What happened, Baz?” I whisper, rubbing his chest now. Last time, I saw the hair he's got between his nipples and down his belly and now I'm feeling the wirey crinkle of it. I've really got a mostly naked Basilton in my bed. But that, like his fangs, fades to the background. All I can focus on is the whole of him, the urgency of the moment holding my heart hostage.

He doesn't answer me. So I keep working warmth back into him until he falls asleep. Lucky git.

He needs it though. He needs the sleep and he needs the warmth. He needs me right now. All I got, I give.

**Baz**

The next morning is unspeakable. The room’s a disaster. My entire body hurts. My eyes feel like they're about to be sent off to the glue factory. Everything hurts. I'm ninety percent naked in Simon Snow’s bed and I'm numb all the way through.

No. Just my leg because it's crushed between his thighs. Thank Magick it's the good leg. Well. Now I can hobble around even more effectively. He evened it up for me. Well done, Snow. If you can't fix me at least you've broken me off into proportionate pierces. Considerate of him.

“You're awake,” he croaks from beside me, all sleep-thick and radiant with warmth. I'm already tangled with him so what's the point of shying away now? I shove my nose into the crook of his armpit where he's scorched cinnamon-warm. He flails a little but let's me.

Crowley, he lets me. He lets me just like I let him put his hands in my hair again and again. (Like I let myself cry on him.)

If I close my eyes long enough, hard enough, maybe he'll let me forget everything too.

Except it's Simon. He's been very kind, the perfect little hero, but he's still bullheaded and tactless. He's still terrible. He still _talks._

“You almost drowned last night.”

“Hardly.”

“The floor’s still wet.”

“You should have cleaned it up.”

He shoves me out of his armpit and rolls over onto all fours atop me. Fuck me if he isn't down to his pants too. This should be gayer and more exciting - the things dreams are made of - but instead it's nauseatingly vulnerable. I'm both terrified by his proximity and stupidly comforted. I'm maybe just stupid. I think it leached into my brain from sleeping so close to him, like a fungus he spread to me. Crowley. Simonly transmitted diseases. They should have warned us about the dangers of proximity and osmosising degenerative thinking.

“Baz,” he snarls. “You're scaring me.”

I snort unattractively. There's a throbbing pain in the side of my head. That scares me. I scare me. I'm scared in general.

“Tell me what happened to you.”

“Why?”

“Because - because I said so.” He exhales. Sucks it back in. Drops it out again. “Because I'm asking.”

“Why?”

His face screws up. I think he'd punch me if he wasn't so dead set on pitying me.

“Because,” he says again, starting to whinge.

I hold my breath and his eyes bulge with anticipation and then I ask: “why?”

No wonder Mordelia gets such a kick out of being annoying. Simon roars and shakes me, pressing me into the bed. I laugh at his outrage and he only gets more indignant.

“You - fucking - arsehole!”

I laugh around the choke of my words, my body bouncing on the bed, the noise up-down see-saw, swing-about-town, bouncing out of the coffin of me. “Tell me how you really feel, Snow.”

He gives me one last shove before flopping down beside me in a strop, his face next to mine on the pillow. I roll over onto my cheek and our noses bump together. Neither of us moves away.

“I don't like that something hurt you,” he whispers. I suck in a breath.

“Why?” I ask again but this time I mean it. He narrows his eyes and breathes all over me in a sigh.

“Because.”

Crowley, we're both annoying.

“Thank you,” I tell him. He blinks his big insufferably blue eyes at me.

“You're welcome. How's your head.”

“Fine.” Hurts. So does everything else. Nothing worth writing home about.

He chews on his lip. Where's his cross? Gone. Took it off. Took it off - for me? Crowley - the blur of last night hits me like a - like a numpty to the head. Terrible.

“Tell me who hurt you,” he insists, jostling me slightly, rocking me with a hand on my hip. Fingers on the elastic of my pants, fingers on my skin. Our knees bend up together; our feet push into the blankets and tangle as one until if someone asked him to wiggle his big toe, it’d be me wiggling instead, trying to separate our skin.

“Who said someone hurt me?”

“Baz,” he scolds, huffing, mouth and chin pushing out. The bolt of his jaw works, a bulging masculine shape, as ridiculous as his throat. “I know what being hurt looks like.”

Simon Snow, you break my heart.

Simon Snow, you kept me alive.

“That’s concerning,” I tell him because someone should.

“You’re concerning,” he tells me because it’s obvious.

“Since when are you concerned?”

He puffs his morning breath all over me like a dragon out of a quagmire; how does he smell like eggs and burnt bacon before breakfast? It’s like he leaks cholesterol. “I’m not. I mean - I am. I am. I am.”

“Don't hurt yourself."

“I am,” he says again. Little toy soldier needs someone to wind his gears again, look, he’s stuttering out. I've done this. What else can I break?

“Don’t be.”

“Don’t flood the room then.”

“It is rather damp in here…”

“You’re so full of shit,” he growls, rolling over onto his back to glare at the ceiling. “I saw your fangs, you know.”

Ah.

“Touch awkward,” I murmur, pulling his comforter up around my chin. He’s kicked his blanket down and I can see the flat of his nipples, pink and obscene. I didn’t imagine this is how the conversation would go; yes, Snow, I’m a vampire. In fact, I was left to rot to death in a coffin recently and my, don’t you have perfectly round areolas. I’m losing it. I lost it. I chucked the last of it with a Maccie’s burger. It’s all processed meat and cheese slices and soggy pickles from here, lads.

“The crying was more awkward than the vampire thing, I’ll tell you.”

“We can forget that happened.”

“I can’t.” He flings himself over me again, unable to be good and quiet. But his hands are on my face, suffocating me - no, only touching me, turning my cheek to the side to inspect my head. “You’re a vampire.”

I bare my teeth at him. Nothing to see here, Snow.

He licks his thumb and rubs at a fleck of dried blood. I can smell it on the pillow. It smells dead.

Simon Snow, will I be another dark creature you've slain? Or are you good enough with your blade to only cut the darkness in me and leave the boy behind? But I've seen him swing his blade; he's only ever done decapitations, not dissections.

But I've been beside him when he's gone off. Not one spark has touched me. Maybe he's bright enough to hold the horror away.

His thumb traces the arch of my eyebrow, dimpling in at the highest peak; the muscle underneath flutters. He moves it up, then down, then up again, his own face trying to mimic my usual taunting intrigue.

When his fingers start prodding my lips, that’s when I call it.

“What are you doing?”

He shies away from me. “Dunno. Making sure you’re not a clone.”

“Numpty,” I hiss.

He flips me the bird and sits up, pushing all the sheets on top of me. He’s not as big as he should be by this time of the year; he’s still gawky with thinness, the youth of him stretched out and obvious. He hasn’t put on the costume of a man yet.

“I’m going to breakfast. I’ll bring you back something.” Scrubs a hand over his face, burrowing into his palm for a long moment before sawing it up through his hair and yanking on his curls. They’re a disaster. He’s a disaster. No one notices that either. Our whole school’s immunized against the slow disrepair of him.

No. That’s not right. It’s not disrepair. Broken is his status quo. We’d be more shaken if he woke up full and functional one day.

I want to ask him why he knows I’m falling apart too, but then again, I did make quite a scene of it. So dramatic, Basilton. Maybe I should have listened to father and Fiona. Too late now. I’m not taking steps back. There’s only forward. I'm not going back. I'm not going back in there.

Simon smacks a hand down on my belly through the sheets and gives me a firm little tussle. “Couple of bacon butties will fix you right up.”

“Yes, the cure-all doctor’s everywhere praise.”

“S’right.”

His hand lingers. His eyes find mine. He tips towards me.

Is he -

I lay there frozen.

He comes over me in a stretch.

He grabs my wand off his nightstand and passes it to me. “Think you can fix up the room while I’m gone?”

My throat works around a dry spell. “I can manage that.”

Another pat to my belly. I’m an animal he’s decided to keep. Fed and washed. Treated for fleas. As long as I keep my teeth in check, maybe he’ll forgo the muzzle. I'm too tired to be terrified of the potential. This is the world I live in now.

“Go, fetch, breakfast,” I order.

“Yeah, yeah, just,” he sucks in his bottom lip, spits it back out all wet. “Working up to my soggy shoes. Your fault.”

With a great burdened sigh, I roll to the edge of his bed and **dry as a bone** everything my eyes can see. This is our sunken kingdom. Behold.

“Really thought living at the top of a tower would make us flood proof,” he mumbles, clever boy. I nestle into his pillow and smell him on my skin. Suddenly, this world is boundless, the walls broken down, the rules foregone. I am uncaged.

“I’m taking your footie hoodie,” he declares, snatching it off the back of my chair. It’s clean and safe from last night’s carnage. I might have spelled the carcass of his school uniform dry, but even he has his limits on how wrinkled clothing can be; wonders never cease. (He is always at the crux of them.)

**Simon**

I don’t tell Penny about Baz. I don’t tell her for the same reason I don’t tell her about the Visiting, about Baz’s mum. Because it's his mum. Because it's Baz. Because this is something I don’t know what to do with yet but I don’t want his trauma chalked up in a What We Know What We Don’t Know list, even if I make one in my head. It’s mostly blanks. It’s not much.

I’ve got enough to know what to do when I walk into the room one day and hear a familiar buzz.

He’s bent at the sink, nose to the mirror, a litter of kittens on the floor. He’s got my hair trimmer throttled in a hand. We meet eyes in the glass.

“Let me do it.”

His beautiful hair. His beautiful everything. He’s in tatters. He’s beautiful.

I don’t know who we’ve become that he hands me the clippers without a fight. Still can’t turn his back on me though. I sit him on the toilet lid and stand between his legs. His head bows forward, forehead to my belly. I have to keep my breaths even so I don't send him swaying.

“Should have cut it with scissors first,” I mumble, folding his ear down so I can smooth the guard flat to his skull, sweeping up. He sheds all over me. Feels like tearing apart a wedding dress, his beautiful hair. “Just take a little longer like this.”

I don’t ask him what happened. I don’t ask him why this. It’s just hair.

It’s never just hair.

His skull rattles in my hands. I bring the buzzers to my mouth again and again to blow his hair out of the blades, black cat dandelion. One side, then the next. Tilt his head back by the chin and look at the sharp of his cheeks, the bone coming through. He looks naked.

“Want a mohawk?” He’s so fit he could pull it off. Mohawk and pigtails. I used to think he could do anything.

“All of it,” he rasps, barely audible over the metallic drone of the clippers. The shake’s gone into my hand. My knuckles are jumping. It’s easier to blame it on electricity and machine than what’s really making me tremble. Baz. Buzz. Baz. Buzz. A zip of Zs. His name's something hard on the tongue you can carry around with you.

“Alright.” All of it. I get the mad thought that this is what some gods must feel like when they make something new. His widow’s peak looks dead wicked buzzed. He looks like a knife. There’s a small bald patch at his temple. He healed himself but he couldn’t magic hair there. Funny what you can and cannot fix with magic. Sad too. Even Baz Pitch can’t do it all. Never thought I’d wish he could, but here I am, wishing. This year’s all kinds of fucked up. Not that I expected anything less. Makes sense in a fucked up way that doesn't make sense.

I stroke the velvety grain of his hair with my thumb. “You’re a new man.”

He blinks owlishly up at me. Beaky nose. He’s beautiful. No hiding now. I see you, Baz Pitch. No clone would do such a shit job of being him. This is all him. I get down on my knees and pass him the buzzers.

“Clean me up?”

He blows his hair out of the blades and into my face, the dickhead. I pull strands off my lips and turn around, give him my neck. His fingers creep into my curls and settle, scratching. His pinky slots down under my jar, pressing into the artery beating up to meet him and giving it all away. I can’t hide. Not from him. Never could, just like he can't from me. Me and him. We're meant to find each other. Crucible handed us to each other and the childhood game of peekaboos and hide-and-go-seek's coming to an end. It's quitting time. Time to wrap it up, boys.

“I can’t do a fade.”

“Do it all.”

“No.”

“Fine then. Do what you want.”

I close my eyes. I give him my neck. He shears me neatly. Figures he’d be good at this. He’s careful and slow, petting me over and over. He turns the clippers off at one point and just pets me so good I could fall asleep but I’m too busy buzzing and trying not to catch on fire with his cool touch.

It’s deafening in the aftermath. My skin itches with hair. I can see it sticking to his fingers. I think about sucking his thumb into my mouth. It’s a weird thought.

“What now?” he asks.

“Uhm. Sweep? Shower. Sweep then shower.”

He laughs quietly behind me and knuckles the side of my head. “If you say so.”

“Yeah.”

We take turns and then we’re on my bed. He’s swallowed up in his football hoodie, the one I snatched from him the other week. I can’t stop staring at the bald spot on the side of his head.

I’m no good with healing spells, but I’m no good with most things and they still turn out alright, don’t they.

**“Kiss it better.”**

He lets me try. Magic can’t fix everything. Not even mine.

I’ll try again, later, when we make stars together. I’ll try again after that, when I know more, when the world’s on fire.


End file.
